MERCED - The name sounded familiar to Assistant Sheriff Henry Strength when an FBI agent called him Saturday morning, wanting the criminal record of a possible suspect in a murder in Yosemite.

Stayner. Cary Stayner.

As Strength tracked down the information for the FBI, he made the connection. He had been a young patrol officer in 1972 when Cary Stayner's younger brother, Steven Stayner, was snatched off a Merced street in the county's most infamous kidnapping.

Now Steven Stayner's brother, Cary, 37, was the prime suspect in the decapitation killing of a young naturalist, and the FBI suggested he had a role in the murder of three Yosemite tourists in February - Carole Sund, her daughter, Juli, and family friend Silvina Pelosso.

"It was a shock," Strength said.

Shock was a familiar reaction in Merced, a San Joaquin Valley city about 100 miles southeast of San Francisco, where residents considered Steven Stayner a hero for escaping from a child molester in 1980, only to die in a motorcycle accident nine years later.

Steven Stayner was 7 years old when he was approached on his way home from school by a Ukiah hotel clerk named Kenneth Parnell. The boy was asked if he wanted to donate something to a church.

"He said, "OK,' and gave me these booklets and he asked me if I wanted a ride home. And I said, "Well, it's just a little ways, I can walk.' He goes, "OK. Don't worry. I'll just give you a ride home.' And I go, "Well, OK,' and so I got in the car."

Thus began a seven-year ordeal in which Parnell held and sexually molested Stayner, forcing the boy to call him

"Dad" and saying his parents no longer wanted him.

Then on Valentine's Day, 1980, Stayner left a Mendocino County cabin and walked into the Ukiah police station along with 5-year-old Timmy White, another Parnell kidnap victim, whom he had helped to free. The 14-year-old was an instant hero, and later the subject of the NBC miniseries "I Know My First Name Is Steven."

Neighbors who remember Steven Stayner's return to his family's home on quiet Bette Street in Merced were astonished that his brother was now a suspect in one, or more, grisly killings.

Lynnea Shertz, who grew up two doors down from the Stayners, remembered Cary Stayner as a scrawny teenager who liked to draw figures.

"We figured he would be a cartoonist by now," Shertz said. "I'm just shocked that he would be involved in something like this."

On Monday, Cary Stayner was to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Sacramento for the murder of Joie Armstrong, a Yosemite Institute naturalist. He is also the prime suspect in the Sund-Pelosso case.

Cary Stayner was the oldest of Delbert and Kay Stayner's five children, who included Steven and three sisters. He graduated from Merced High School, and worked as a window installer for a glass company in nearby Atwater.

An introvert

While his brother was outgoing and popular at Merced High, Cary Stayner was known as more of an introvert.

"I knew both of them. I'd play basketball with them, hang out with them," said Tim Tatum. "Cary was pretty much a loner. He did his own thing. He smoked cigarettes. He stayed away from most of the other kids."

The description is echoed by Cary Stayner's co-workers and friends at the Cedar Lodge near Yosemite Valley, where he lived and worked as a handyman.

"He seemed like a nice guy. He would joke around with us workers, but he was also kind of quiet," said Albert Sanchez, who worked with Stayner on a month-long gardening project earlier this year. "I don't think he did it. In the little time I worked with him, he just seemed like a regular person."

Jesse Houtz, co-owner of Cedar Lodge Restaurants, said Cary Stayner would hang out at the bar, but often kept to himself. He usually ordered a rum and coke.

"He's a nice guy. He's never caused any problems," Houtz, 32, said. "He knew everyone and talked to everyone, but I can't say anyone was his best friend or not."

Childhood examined

Along Bette Street, neighbors searched for clues from Cary Stayner's childhood that he was capable of the gruesome crime.

Vickie Flores, who grew up with the Stayner children, said Cary Stayner had a strange side.

"One time Cindy (Stayner) and I were outside at night and he exposed himself to us. He was perverted," Flores, 35, said. "I knew he was kinda weird, but I never knew he would get to that level of actually murdering anyone."

Linda Shertz, stepmother of Lynnea, said Cary Stayner was traumatized by his brother's abduction. When Steven Stayner returned home, the whole family's focus was on him, she said.

"Everything they did and everything they had, it was about Steven," she said. "Then finally, things were getting to be normal and things were getting good, that's when Steven gets killed," she said.

On Sept. 20, 1989, Steven Stayner was riding his new Kawasaki motorcycle without a helmet in the rain. He skidded trying to avoid a car pulling out of a driveway and fatally struck his head.

Putting together a life

Steven Stayner, then 24, had married and had two children. He had joined the Mormon Church. Assistant Sheriff Strength said Stayner was on the waiting list for a job as a county jail guard.

His death dealt another blow to the family - but not its last. In December 1990, Jesse "Jerry" Stayner, 42, Cary and Steven's uncle, was shot to death in his Merced home. The case remains unsolved.

After Steven's death, his parents sold the house. Some of the older children, including Cary Stayner, had moved out by then.

"They did mention about finally getting a chance to get out of here," said Ennis Mayberry, 36, who bought the house from the Stayners 10 years ago. "They said they wanted to get away and wash away some bad memories."

Strength said Cary Stayner's arrest has stunned the community.

"I was just talking to someone about this. We were talking about the Kennedy family, and all the bad things that have happened to them," Strength said. "Then you have Steven Stayner get kidnapped, and then he comes back and gets killed in a motorcycle accident. Then his uncle gets killed in a homicide. And now this. It happens to all families, I guess." &lt;